Slashdot Mirror
Intentional SpyWare Infection?
zagman asks: "I am doing some research on SpyWare / AdWare, and how to prevent/contain the problem, and am looking for some of those 'Bad Sites' - you know, the ones which take advantage of any of the known exploits and installs a whole bunch of software without your knowledge (or sometime with it). I am testing this on IE6 on an XP-SP1 box (no further patches) and also IE6.02 on a XP-SP2 box. Can anyone out there recommend some 'good' bad-sites for me to go? Benjamin Edelman did some similar work, and posted his results, but I also want to compare Mozilla and FireFox's response as well. Thanks out there!" Update: 11/24 4:05pm EDT by C : In case it hasn't been mentioned already, a considerable amount of infection can be obtained from a single website. Any other infectious goodies out there?
try out lop.com and see if you can clean that crap off.
guess you couldn't be bothered to even read a whole paragraph. Look closely as the poster clearly indicates he wants to find sites that infect systems with Spyware and see how Firefox and Mozilla respond to the same sites, to see if they are as impervious as many claim. Also, at the beginning of the paragraph he says that he is doing this to find better ways to prevent and contain the problems with spyware/adware/malware, not to bash IE. Personally, I've already come across some Firefox/Mozilla SPECIFIC spyware/trojans using Firefox/Mozilla's automatic XPI extension installation. If I were an average joe user, these could very well dupe me into clicking through and ruining the privacy, security, and integrity of my system... assuming I could even still use the system afterwards. I look forward to the findings of this poster, and the findings of similar articles. Security through obscurity is comming to an end for Firefox and Mozilla, so these are important issues.
as in here :"Firefox/Mozilla SPECIFIC" etc, it would be nice if the background OS was always mentioned as well. I'm seeing way too many stories and anecdotals in posts, etc talking about "firefox" like it's a totally complete operating system or something. Can't tell you how many times I've seen that, but it's quite a few lately. If it's a specific reference, than specify it.
It would be better to always say like "firefox/win" or "firefox/linux" if that makes a difference in the reference.
With that said, SOMEDAY there's going to be a major security foobar with firefox on win and it will taint open source and linux by association in the mass public mindshare. It's going to happen. Not if, it's when.
Too bad open source programs and developers can't stick with open source operating systems to maintain a clear and distinct difference in the software world.
All I see is thousands of people doing billionaire microsofts jobs for them for free or peanuts.